goofball

And bigger!

I haven't posted here in a while, so I thought I'd put up a little update.  Duma is almost 6 months old (in 4 days).  She's grown a lot, but still isn't too big.  I don't think she's going to get all that big.  We see lots of labs at the dog park that are younger but bigger than her.

She's bigger now, but is definitely still a puppy.  She doesn't sleep in her crate anymore, I leave her out in my bedroom with the door closed.

She's mostly good, but I catch her sleeping on my bed sometimes.  And if I leave her for a couple hours with nothing to chew on....she'll find something else...the corner of my desk drawer, a chapstick container she found, a cowboy hat...  but mostly she's good.

Getting bigger!

Duma visits her brothers!

My friend Yaju is fostering two of Duma's brothers, and I finally took her over to see them.  Not sure whether they remember each other, but they had fun playing.  They are much bigger than she is, but she holds her own...and she's quicker.

Yaju's brother is visiting from Sri Lanka and had fun feeding them all treats. 

Duma can jump higher than they can.

Duma meets Grampa!

My Dad and Bobbye came to Eugene for a visit and finally got to meet Duma.  I think that means she's officially part of the family now:

 

Duma's favorite things

1) Laying in the sun:

2) Hanging with her Papa:

Duma's new friend

Duma has a new friend, Bandit:

Bandit is Haley's dog, a 3 year-old lhasa apso

Duma loves him, and he, well he likes her most of the time, though he keeps her in her place when she gets too excited or tries to take his tennis ball. Whenever I tell Duma "no," Bandit runs over and barks at her for me.

They both love to sleep in the sun:

"Duma" is official

Got Duma a name tag today (in Oregon colors):

This is her in her crate. I had reservations about using a crate (my dog growing up, Pepper, never was in a crate). But everyone I talked to, including the vet and the people at the shelter, said this is the way to go, and that she will begin to love her crate. The first night, she whined for about 30 minutes and then fell asleep. She still whines for a while at night, and during the day when I'm gone, but she sometimes goes in and sleeps by herself during the day, so that's good. I work close to home, so I come home at lunch every day to hang with her.

Exploring

Duma's favorite thing (next to eating) is to run around the backyard. She jumps and pounces around and still loves chasing feet.

She has started biting shoelaces and pants legs, something I'm trying to work on with her. It's hard to train her to not chew when she's so excited that she doesn't pay attention. But I'm trying to teach her to have a soft touch when she uses her mouth.

Her first big accomplishment was learning to get up and down the (2) stairs on the deck. The stairs were scary at first and she would get her front feet up, but couldn't figure out how to get her back feet up. Then, a couple times when she was running from the deck towards the yard she misjudged and took both stairs in one jump, collapsing and hitting her chin on the ground where she landed. But she got right up, un-fazed, and kept running around, like this:

On house-training, she's doing pretty well so far. If I take her out every hour or two, she will go right when she gets out, so she seems to know that the yard is the spot to go. But she's had a couple accidents, so I never leave her alone in a room (unless she's in her crate). She's also taken a liking to my slippers and shoes...another reason I can't leave her alone!

Trip to the Vet

Duma goes to the vet:

She was great at the vet. Very calm, though she was shaking a little bit. The vet said she looks healthy. Got 2 shots with no complaints. She had roundworm, and was given a pill to take. A second to follow next week. This is going to be an expensive family member!

Duma!

Meet Duma. Her name means "cheetah" in Swahili. Yes, I'm aware that a cheetah is a cat. But a cheetah is also awesome, like my dog, okay?

She was born April 7, 2008 (my dad's birthday too) in a litter of 10. She is a Lab mix, and, judging from her parents, likely mixed with Pit, Chow, and Border Collie. She is all black except for a tuft of white on her chest. But she has a brown sheen in the light in some spots, so she might be more of a brindle as she grows. Some of her brothers and sisters were brown with black markings.

I found Duma at the adopt-a-thon at the County Fairgrounds on June 1. A man had set up a pen with puppies in it and was giving them away for free. Incidentally, the dude looked a lot like Gerard Depardieu. He said that his roommate (the dogs owner) was going in for open-heart surgery soon and couldn't take care of them. I've been looking at dogs for a month now, going to the shelters, browsing petfinder.com...etc. But nothing clicked until Duma. She was really playful in the pen with the others, but was totally calm when anyone picked her up. All the puppies were that way. So I hung out for about 45 minutes playing with the puppies and making up my mind about taking one...and finally selected Duma! The other puppies were taken in by the shelters that were at the adopt-a-thon.

Duma was really shy when we put her on the grass to play away from the other puppies. She didn't run away, but kept looking around nervously. Eventually we got her to play a bit and she chased our feet when we ran.